by Robert Kopecky -
What does paranormal really mean?
The Greek prefix para means besides, alongside of, or beyond. As such, paranormal refers to a normality that runs alongside of our usually accepted standards. Geometrically speaking, it shares a common side, and a common vertex, or source.
So in its basic sense, it is adjoined to what’s normal, comes from the same point of origin, and is heading in generally the same direction.
To Webster, it’s basically everything that isn’t understandable scientifically. But if you go back (or if you stay put) anywhere in human history, that would mean that everything we’ve ever learned (or will learn) scientifically either has been or currently is, in a way paranormal.
Have you ever met Bigfoot? Well, neither have I but not for the lack of trying. When I was a kid, many years ago, my mom took us on a summer adventure searching for Sasquatch (a trip she has conveniently forgotten). That was a long time ago – way back before Bigfoot even had an agent.
A lot of things have changed since then. In those days, no one used the term “paranormal” yet, referring to all the crazy stuff that science couldn’t easily explain, like UFOs, ESP, ghosts and evidence of the afterlife, unknown species of hominids, the possibility of life on other planets, secret occult societies, and so forth.
Even quantum physics, alternative energy sources, animal intelligence and more provable subjects were considered to be “koo koo” – usually said while circling your ear with one finger.
Of course, nowadays what we call paranormal is quite possibly more normal than what we call normal.
“Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is opposed. Third, it is regarded as self-evident.” --Arthur Schopenhauer
A MAGICALLY INTERCONNECTED WORLD
The ascension of the paranormal in our global culture isn’t the result of all those ancient alien gods or ghost hunters streaming across our flatscreens.
No, those shows are simply symptoms of the new reality I’m talking about.
The real contributors to the change are the rapidly expanding consciousness flooding our world and the realization of it through our technological global mind – the Internet – which simultaneously informs and connects all intelligence on our planet.
The cause, in short, is the spiritual and technological evolution of humankind.
Way back when, the existence of the Internet itself would have been popularly considered a scientific impossibility but now it’s a functioning metaphor, pointing directly to the heart of much of what we’ve always considered to be paranormal: a magically interconnected world, where anything that can be imagined is truly possible.
In the wake of quantum physics and the description of an observer-dependent, wave-based reality where matter realizes itself from the fluid energy alive in the quantum vacuum, crystallized in a musical, extra-dimensional geometry, consciousness then arises within that matter, connected faster than the speed of light within the “cosmic plenum” or “zero-point field” (the alchemists’ unus mundus).
It becomes clear that there’s practically nothing outside the realm of possibility – especially as long as we’re flying around on this planet in outer space. Every bit of today’s “real” stuff sounds pretty paranormal, doesn’t it?
PARANORMAL COSMIC ETHER
We used to think that only very particular things could be possible on our planet, which was clearly at the center of the stars revolving around it. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler were paranormal koo-koos back then.
Recently, the space telescope bearing Kepler’s name has discovered its 1000th earth-like planet. From that we can easily extrapolate the existence of an infinite number of planets like ours, and so too, an infinite array of humanlike (or other) life forms; some of which, one way or another, may have been visiting earth for a long time.
One of my favorite smart guys, Dr. Carl Jung, tried to partially describe these concepts of a paranormal cosmic ether or “Akashic Field,” and the “psycho-social” anomalous phenomena of extra-terrestrial travelers in his books, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle and Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
But despite his careful description of an independent, interlocking field of consciousness, and his rational suggestion of an archetypal based kind of mass-illusion at work in the world, there was no real way around the overwhelming scientific evidence, and personal testimony verifying the existence of each of these “new realities.”
Like most scientists and academicians, he had to tread lightly, lest he upset the conventional apple cart, and destroy his professional credibility.
In that sense, the “psycho-social,” mass-illusion based theories of skeptical scientists can cut both ways. The same type of group ‘wishful thinking’ that can be applied to the average suggestible Joe can also apply to the traditional scientific community – to their own kind of cognitive dissonance (or denial), evidenced by centuries of membership in a Flat Earth Society of one kind or another.
Another of Dr. Jung’s famous quotes comes to mind in this case:
“One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God.”
I wouldn’t be the first to suggest a similarity between organized religion and the institutions of science, but I may be one of the few people you’ve ever heard say:
God is paranormal. In fact, the very foundations of all our science and religion fit into a paranormal framework, rather than the other way around.
What we call paranormal is nearly always finally reached by science and religion through further evidence of an enhanced reality. There has always been a metaphysical core to the progress of our understanding.
ENGAGING A SIXTH-SENSORY POTENTIAL
When we sidestep conventional, archaic beliefs and follow the paranormal path that often heads more directly on the course of our spiritual and technological evolution – engaging a sixth sensory potential, you might say – we can start considering our new realities in a much more beneficial, even realistic way.
We can even start to consider some of God’s “alternative” work.
Then, UFOs are simply real indications of a technology that, being available to other people from the stars, is available to us – based only on the limits of our imaginations.
(On a personal paranormal note, I’ve witnessed three UFO events myself: “The Phoenix Lights;” a swarm of orbs; and a ‘star’ that zipped away, drawing a huge “Z” across the sky…and I’m only high on life).
The silhouettes of “stealthy” aircraft, regularly documented occurrences of “unidentifiable” aircraft, the odd coincidence of “The Roswell Incident” with our sudden surge of technological innovation like integrated silicon circuitry, fiber optics, microwave technology, advanced construction materials and the development of alternative propulsion, power sources, and artificial intelligence all suggest fascinating new realities, many that are already commonly at use.
Our egos may find the Crystal Skull phenomena kind of silly while we read about it on devices linked instantaneously to the global brain, operating on microscopically programmed crystal circuitry.
There’s a ton of evidence, conjectural and empirical, for transpersonal communication (formerly ESP) in a human sense – not just in the reliably provable context of quantum non-locality and entanglement.
ALTERNATIVE ARCHEOLOGY FOR HUMAN CIVILIZATION
Reasonable investigation of the literal mountains of alternative archaeology can bring to light an entirely different history of humankind than what ‘s conventionally accepted; and the former science fiction of genetic manipulation and fabrication of species becomes reality, once we’ve mapped the human genome and regularly manipulate those building blocks of life ourselves.
The confluence of “conspiracy theory” with the paranormal gets stood on its head by the revelations of whistleblowers, documenting our super hi-tech mass surveillance by ‘secret’ corporate and governmental agencies.
It even becomes pretty impossible to imagine that some of those intensely elaborate, precisely hewn crop circles appear overnight just thanks to ‘techies’ with beer, boards, and rope.
A LARGER FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS
I also happen to be a three-time near death survivor, and as such (along with hundreds of thousands of others) can testify to the experience of a broader, enhanced field of consciousness, beyond the limitations of our physical form (and believe me, I’m not particularly paranormal).
This field of consciousness can easily contain the profundity of animal intelligence – the understanding of which is being expanded upon by science every day; as well as ghosts, aliens, and extra-dimensional phenomena of every kind. It can provide the basis of the very “cosmic plenum” that enables and energizes everything we experience as being either normal or “paranormal.”
I’m sorry to have left Bigfoot standing in the corner all this time. He must be feeling neglected – as hard as he is to ignore. But discoveries of “lost peoples,” and samples of early hominids, whose genomic analyses demonstrate relationships to completely unknown species of early man along with the simple vastness of everything we have yet to discover, have got to make him (or her), at least not so paranormal after all.
“I’m not going to flat out deny their existence,” says Jane Goodall, our most vaunted primate researcher, “I’m sure that they exist.”
Perhaps we’d be better off embracing our paranormality. Or how about this? How about we just simplify all the old definitions and call it all Reality.
Robert Kopecky is an author and artist whose essays and stories can be found at his blog, Art, Faith, and the Koko Lion or on BeliefNet, The Mindful Word, Soul Life Times, and other places around the web. His book, How to Survive Life (and Death), can be found on Amazon, and at all major bookstores – but remember to support your local bookstores, too! Connect with Robert on Twitter and Facebook.
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